Bataan Death March Survivor To Sign Copies Of Memoir

Col. Glenn D. Frazier A survivor of the Bataan Death March during World War II will sign copies of his book at the Chambersburg Heritage Center on May 17.

Col. Glenn D. Frazier will sign copies of “Hell’s Guest,” from 2 to 4 p.m. at the center at 100 Lincoln Way East. He was a prisoner of war from April 9, 1942, to Sept. 4, 1945, and appeared in acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns’ 14- hour documentary about World War II, “The War.” His story opened the film.

Burns praised Frazier’s book: “Glenn Frazier’s harrowing and heroic story is a constant reminder that the Second World War wasn’t the good war of our subsequent mythologizing, but the worst war ever, where young men from the heartland sacrificed their innocence, and often a whole lot more, to create the world we now enjoy. Frazier’s experience, detailed here in this remarkable book, is at once ironic, courageous, horrifying and ultimately redeeming, and he tells it as only an honest soldier can – straight from the heart.”

The book costs $26.95, plus tax. The Greater Chambersburg Chamber of Commerce, operators of the Heritage Center, will donate all proceeds to Col. Frazier to offset his expenses for traveling to Chambersburg, where he will speak to the Chambersburg Rotary Club on May 16.

Frazier joined the U.S. Army at age 16 and six months later was in the struggle to save Bataan from the Japanese advance. He was captured, marched north in the infamous Bataan Death March and spent the next three years struggling for his life as a Prisoner of War.

The book helps to teach the one lesson Frazier says we all need to learn and relearn: “Our liberty is our most precious possession and worth the price we must pay to preserve it.”

“Looking at the world through the cotton and corn fields of Lowndes County, I could never have imagined that in just a few short years the entire world would be engulfed in war and that I would be caught in the middle of it. Where I lived, events in Europe and Asia, as menacing as they were, seemed light years away. I would soon discover that they were not so far away after all.”

That’s how his powerful memoir begins. It is dedicated to all men and women who fought and died in the Philippine Islands during World War II and in the defense of Bataan and Corregidor, and to all those who worked at home or on the battlefields – “ to live as God intended us to live with the right to determine our own destiny.”

Today, Frazier, now 88, has forgiven his Japanese captors. That forgiveness ended many years of nightmares. He is a recipient of the Medal of Freedom, the Bronze Star, four Purple Hearts and numerous other awards.